We held the House pretty strongly, so that’s good, and a reflection that candidates and ideology matter. We nominated candidates at the District level who could make the case; we didn’t make the case at the national level. It also looks like we did well in state races.

Wrong lessons will be drawn from the Senate races. We nominated a moderate who lost in a Wisconsin which rejected the recall of Scott Walker. Todd Akin was not a Tea Party candidate, Sarah Steelman was and a divided field allowed a weak candidate to win the nomination. Richard Mourdock’s comments, while not Akin, were damaging, but that is not why Mourdock lost; Lugar and his supporters undermined Mourdock all summer and fall before his comment, and had Republicans in Indiana been unified, Mourdock would have won. Other Senate seats were successes — Ted Cruz and Deb Fischer are good additions.

Understand that liberal candidates will be forgiven and protected by their base, as Massachusetts proves. It’s always been that way, and always will be.

So what is the path now?

Stand with House members, they will need all the support they can get. Don’t compromise on principles, and push the eventual legislative compromises to the right as much as possible.

Comments

The Dunkirk comparison is good one. We’re the BEF survivors, standing on a hundred docks of our homeland, unshaven, wounded, hungry and wet. We were plucked from the jaws of disaster by sheer luck and pure pluck, but for what? This is where it breaks down, because there is no Churchill in sight to sort it all out.

A lot of us have tried to step forward, but have been squashed by the Establishment and, quite frankly, conservatives’ desire to moan and groan and not act. (Where was the big Romney wave we were supposed to see?)

Love you Bill but no, Steelman was not the tea party candidate in Missouri. John Brunner was. Steelman was the candidate of the tea party outside Missouri, and that’s a problem we have to fix going forward: the national players have to start listening to local groups instead of trying so hard to tell them what to think. Tea Party candidates lost all over the map in primaries this year. We have got to do a better job recruiting for 2014 (which, btw, will be an excellent year for Republicans. Bank on it.) And the establishment needs to take a seat in the corner; they lost this election, not us.

I have no confidence in the people of America at this point.
It just became a dirty all out political war. The left has the school system, universities, the media, free give aways, character cop-outs, and now a story to forever rally them.
Luckily, it’s become abundantly clear, at least to me, that it has become plainly a battle of good versus evil.

I wasn’t sure. In some states, it’s not allowed. And of course, I’m glad he won. Now, if the House wants to show it has any stones, it should elect Ryan Speaker. Far from sniveling and turning orange like Mr. Boehner, Ryan can clean Obama’s clock in any battle of wits, of facts, of rock-paper-scissor, etc.

The stupid bastards who voted Obama in still blame Bush. I blame Bush for never defending himself, and the GOP for refusing to defend him by sticking Obama with the request he made of Bush to have the TARP money available for him. Sad. Mad. Ashamed.An ignorant no-nothing more interested in wasting the public trust and good! I want Palin, dammit! One good thing to come out of this is we shall see Sarah in 2016 ready, willing, and able to clean up the disaster Obama has four more years to shovel on us.

WHat oh what part of unemployment did the f’n blacks who voted for Obama not understand? It’s hard to believe that Americans want Communism, Islam, and the repression of Christianity.

Obama will gut the military and disarm us. He will institute speech codes and persecute Christianity. He will crack down on dissent. He will sign the U.N. anti-gun treaty, and start enforcing it regardless of what the Senate does. Don’t be too surprised if he finds some dodge not to leave in 2016.

The GOP is not the “Stupid Party”; it is the “Treacherous Party.” Since 1992, every one of our candidates has specifically rejected embracing the conservative base, in favor of seeking “moderates” and Democrats by moving leftward.

As for “conservative” media: time for a reckoning. Romney was their creature, too. They assisted the MSM in “taking out” every conservative who was a threat to Romney, Cain and Gingrich in particular.

Finally, this is the legacy of George W. Bush.

He never stood up to the radical Democrats and media; he reserved his invective for members of his own party — conservatives, that is. In so doing, he allowed the enemies of freedom to become virtually omnipotent.

It is arguable that Gingrich is even a small government conservative but there is no way he or Cain would have even gotten this close. The culture in this country has changed and the demographics do not favor us at this point.

Single moms, hell single females in general, a higher percentage of minorities all prefer big government. You seem to be claiming a more Conservative candidate could have won the day but I am not seeing it. I wish it were true but it just isn’t.

Gingrich and Cain were enthusiastically undermined by their own side, often with demoniacal glee (I stopped reading American Spectator because of the vicious way they piled onto to Cain.) It’s impossible to survive that.

From 1992 through today, people like you keep saying that “The country has changed” and “Conservatism won’t work.”

And I suppose 2010 never happened?

When Republicans run on sheer, unfiltered conservatism, they win. And win big. 2010 proved that, and a country doesn’t change overnight.

Romney ran an incompetent campaign. He conceded the entire late spring through summer to Obama’s attack ads. Romney neither responded in his own defense, nor did he run similar ads himself. He was MUCH nicer to Obama than his conservative primary opponents.

Romney ran a better campaign than McCain. That’s not saying much. It was still a rotten campaign that allowed the other side to paint him as a bad human being. Not to mention that the Establishment who forced him onto us never defended him or attacked Obama.

In short, Romney lost because he richly deserved to lose. He allowed his opponent to define him.

Those are good words, Professor Jacobson, and I’ll do my best to live by them, but I fear that we’re going to have to learn a hard lesson in this country before enough of the mistaken group of people wake up, one that will involve a great deal of pain to many people.

This is pretty much the end, sadly. I’m kind of bewildered by it because even in the left wing cesspool of NYC I’d seen so little enthusiasm for Obama – in comparison to ’08 – that the prospect of a big turnout for him seemed ridiculous. But when you have a man who routinely displayed complete and utter incompetence as he did nonetheless winning rather easily against an opponent who ran a competent campaign, you can either deduce that we’re a nation of morons or much of what our party stands for no longer resonates the majority will of the American people. Both can be true at the same time, obviously.

Well, folks, my glorious state of Texas did our part. Romney took the state 59/38, inspite of the fact that Texas is now almost 40% Hispanics and only 45% white. And we elected another Hispanic to the U.S. Senate.

So we got out part of the Hispanic bloc to vote for Romney. And what the hell was the other states doing? Signing up for food stamps and extended unemployment benefits?

Kiss this “last best hope for mankind” nation good by for the next four years. We have unleased the beast who has nothing to lose.

You know what? We sure did. And the GOP needs to start sending people from all over the country to see what we’re doing right here — esp with our Hispanic outreach. Irony of (bitter) ironies is that John Cornyn is in a position to get things done, and is utterly clueless and tone-deaf.

CatinTexas, get ready for some p!ssed off Texas conservatives. Obama’s EPA is working overtime to shut down coal mines and make our electric bills skyrocket.

Add to that California idiots voting to increase state income tax. We are going to see a steady line of U-Haul trucks/trailers fleeing Loonafornia for the more business friendly state of Texas, but the trouble is they will all be liberals who are just too stupid to understand it was their liberal policies that put California on the path to fiscal ruin to begin with.

There is enough oil in Texas to fuel our state for the next 60 years. Perhaps it is time to tell the rest of the nation to pound sand, no more refined oil to California, New York, Ohio and Florida. They can build their own refineries to process their own damn oil. No more cotton, corn, beef, nada. Do without. If you buy from Texas, it will bankrupt them. We’ll sell to Europe.

The Dumbing Down of America may now be complete. With the re-election of the inexperienced community organizer instead of the seasoned well qualified business executive, it is abundantly clear that people have become addicted to free stuff in lieu of earning earning their living through honest work. Pushed aside are nagging issues such as the terrorist attack in Libya and the human cost involved with Fast and Furious. Accountability in this administration is virtually nonexistent.

Never in my lifetime did either political party present two more qualified candidates than Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Both were squeaky clean, very knowledgeable in their field and had a solid record of achievement. Yet, the public chose to retain the worst team ever even eclipsing Jimmy Carter for incompetence. At least Carter was somewhat honest while the current occupant of the White House has been a consistent liar along with his incompetent cabinet.

The bright light that was shining the way for this country to recover some of its past successes has now been extinguished which will lead to an uncertain future. This does not bode well for the young people who are inheriting a country ridden with debt in an insecure world. It also may well mean an end to the two party system that managed to keep a sort of balance to an ever increasing division of opinion within the country.

Where this will all lead is something that I do not wish to contemplate but I am thankful that I’m not one day younger than I am…

But Romney and Ryan contributed to the dumbing down of the citizenry. They never tried to educate voters about Obama and they never explained their plans for the future. They relied on how bad these 4 years were, but given the crash hit during Bush II’s term, that was not enough. I voted for Romney and contributed, but I never heard a convincing case during the election. They let Obama have the narative that Bush II caused these 4 years. That is the default and they did not fight it at all.

McCain and Romney ran two of the worst campaigns possible and I was writing that for months.

Exit polls show the key to Obama’s victory was that voters blamed Bush II for the “Great Recession.” Romney never challenged that narrative and merely repeated over and over again how bad the last 4 years were.

He should have explained that Bush II did not cause the crisis, bi-partisan housing policy did. Moreover, Obama wasted so much money for so little results; Romney had to explain the how and the why of it, e.g., Obama spent $2,000,000 in deficits for every “job created.” There is that graph on Instapundit and International Liberty that shows where Obama claimed the economy would be and where it is. Romney never mentioned it.

I don’t think he mentioned education reform very much at all. That is winner.

Reaganomic advocates have a great case. Reagan helped the poor and minorities more than anyone. Romney had to make the case that his policies would help the poor and middle income Americans. He did not other than vague chanting about “job creators.” He did not provide details.

Obama played a lousy hand masterfully; he got the battleground states easily.

Well 1997-2000 were some pretty good years of divided government and while Obama and Boehner seem more divided than Clinton and Gingrich, maybe they’ll do well. I do hate all the pork that goes along with a united federal government.

Obama has been re-elected.. and cheers from liberal socialist marxists across the country are deafening.. As Padme Amidala in Star Wars III said- “So this is how Liberty dies, with thunderous applause”- Sadly, the forces of evil have prevailed. History is full of great civilizations that perished from their own hands- society, citizens, govts.. Sadly, the US Constitution, and this great American Republic is no more, and the anti-American anti-Constitutional socialist marxists, and along with it the Islamic forces of evil have triumphed over the Good, and the Western Free World will plunge into a thousand years of darkness, which history will record this being the pivotal point at which it all happened.

My predictions of America’s and Israel’s survival is now like a candle with the flame of light and truth all but gone out.. You can forget about Freedom and Liberty from here on out, as Obama has full rein of unlimited power now.. and the fate of Israel is now sealed in a coming nuclear holocaust..

Dude. The GOP has about 245 v. 190 in the House and at least a neutral if not conservative Supreme Court. Lighten up.

I don’t care what happens to Israel. We are the U.S.A.

Israelis have no more right to that land than Palestinians, i.e., only the claim based on violence. The Israelis won in 1948 via imperialism and terrorism and they are suffering because of revolution and terrorism.

One more SCOTUS appointment will complete the process to bring us to the same status as Mexico. When peaceful regime change cannot be affected, a descent into total government control becomes inevitable.

It’s only a matter of time now and the only question that remains is how long for the full effect to manifest itself…

Oddly enough, the evil of the Cult of Personality was detailed by Nikita Khrushchev in his speech, “The Crimes of the Stalin Era” more than half a century ago.

The damage which will be done to our country on energy, over-regulation, the destruction of our health care system, and gutting of defense will not be something which can be undone in a single generation – assuming we have another election.

My county went for Romney by 88% and he was not our first choice. I will give up when I can’t resist it anymore. The worst problem is that, over many years, the Executive branch has been given nearly dictatorial power. It was lazy Congresses that did it.

We do not need a hot revolution, so I will keep my guns locked away. Better: Let’s get our House guys to trade higher taxes on evil rich people for a big reduction in the power of the Executive branch…and some other stuff. A 90’s level top tax rate won’t do anything for the economy, so let’s call their bluff and get some good stuff at the same time.

Hey Ann Coulter – you got your nominee, after calling those of us who weren’t as impressed with him stupid. And what happened? Why, your other crush, Chris Christie, sold you and his party out for photo ops, so he can win another term.

Death is not something that comes over a being in an instant – it is a process – it will take time for all signs of life to become still.

Make no mistake, this was our last stand and we lost.

The United States of America, as originally established and constituted, died today.

The manifestations and consequences of the decisions made today will play out over the course of the next four years, but the trajectory is set and is now unavoidable.

That Republicans hold the House is of no consequence – the power of the House is in the power of the purse. We have not had a budget in three years and are running trillion dollar deficits and piling on debt at an incredible rate. There is no mechanism to stop this.

The president can be found with both a live boy and a dead girl (never mind a dead ambassador) and need not fear impeachment. Harry Reid would never allow a trial.

Death will come to a number of Supreme Court justices over the next four years as their life spans come to a conclusion – expect nothing short of living constitution advocates to be appointed.

Taxes will hit us like a sledgehammer come the first of the year and no one in government need worry about Tea Party protests or anything else – they can just laugh at the sight of anyone that bothers to show up.

No, folks, I hate to be a sour puss but you can go out front of the house and take down the stars and stripes.

Your liberty is gone. You are no longer a free man – you live in bondage to your government.

Yep, one more O’bammy SCOTUS appointment and all legal remedies will be squelched. Toss in some Cap ‘n Trade, union card check, suppression of energy resources along with a good dose of gun control and government controlled health care to complete the recipe.

I’m glad that you young’ns will hafta face whatever comes down the pike. Hopefully, I’ll be able to check out before the final event…

Yes. This was a big loss. Four more years with this leftist is going to be long. And now he has nothing to lose by being even more leftist. What is worst is that he totally worked the city boss angle. Get taxpayer money to special interests, get kickback contributions, and have enough patronage generally to defy his own fiscal idiocy.

But Romney ran an inane campaign; I wish he had explained how Reaganomics was wonderful for the least among us.

What a mess the new president will inherit. I guess we get four more years of POTUS blaming Bush and the Republicans in the House.

If Obama sticks to his ideology, with no concern of reelection, who knows where he goes from here. He has already been so outlandish, there was no way he could win … except he did.

My concern is Obama really is the product of Rev. Wright and Frank Davis Marshall. What if the Muslim Brotherhood “alliance” really is stronger than the concern for our ambassadors and military? And what about Van Jones and others in Obama’s cabinet that praised Mao or Chavez?

The populist uprisings of the banana republics strike me much the same as Obama’s base. They are willing to make demands for massive redistribution, and ready to be violent, with support from dear leader.

“We” need to coalesce around some great conservative ideals, but the Tea party gets co-opted by the evangelicals, and the churches have been co-opted by liberals and their “social justice”. And the war against our freedoms is international, as our apologizing president demonstrates.

Somewhere the rainbow promises meet hard reality. It may be a dirty nuke in some port, resulting in market collapse. Or a funding crisis, where our bonds are rejected, and our currency falters. We are on a course where perhaps a calamity is the only thing that will bring real change.

But in the meantime we can be building a foundation and framework for after the calamities. Watching so many enamored with Obama’s rhetoric, in the face of his broad based failures, is rather disturbing … even as Obama now again says we are not red states and blue states but united states. (though he will punish his political enemies)

Not much you can do if you can only count on conservative white people to vote for you.

You’ve lost women.
You’ve lost gay people.
You’ve lost young people.
You’ve lost anyone who care about the environment and global warming.
You’ve lost Hispanics.
You’ve lost moderates.
You’ve lost independents.
You’ve lost the black vote (forever)

Well, the “coup” has failed against Teh Chosen Won. We’re now officially The Chicago States of America, and Valerie Jarrett is already talking about payback against muthafu*kas like you and and like me. Yes, The State, with all its attendant power and inertia, will be turned against us for real, now.

If you’re one of the 53% or, heaven forbid, the 1%, you are now Emmanuel Goldstein.

Oh, and Bill Clinton and Hitlery have already been paid off in 40-pieces of silver. She’s already writing her 2016 speeches.

Remember, God had led them safely into the desert when they said they would be better off back in Egypt and made the golden calf.

The next four years will increase the debt by another $6 trillion and when Obama leaves office, the national debt will be $24 trillion or more unless the speaker of the house gets balls and finally shuts down the government forcing a balanced budget.

America is not dead, this is no dunkirk, the dem’s aren’t nazi’s, and I am not british. This is just something that goes on and on. Put a weak candidate, get your butt kicked. There was a reason the media went through every candidate and dropped him down. America didn’t fail the party the party failed america.

I’m very disappointed. Three theories: a) keeping abortion legal is critical to enough people that… we might as well forget a Republican coalition; b) the integrity of elections is hopelessly compromised, especially with early voting; c)Americans are way too susceptible to propaganda and/or are generally stupid; d) (yeah i can’t count) a combination of two or all three of the preceding.

(b) is suspect because we kept the House, but not too suspect. Needs more study.

I didn’t like Romney. I’m a libertine conservative. But I’m disappointed, disgusted, annoyed. I see no hope for capitalism now. I’m in the mind of the New Foundation. Especially since i think teh fundamental problem we have is demographic rather than Democratic. We’re going to gave to wait for the slow process of working through that problem first before we can rescue liberty. Not i, not my children, but my grandchildren -if they are lucky and work hard- will finally recover a shred of what we were.

I’m done. Support the House Reps? maybe, ask me in a few weeks. tonight i feel like switching sides just to hasten the crises coming our way, on the [admittedly dumb and risky, but I’m tired and dejected] theory that the sooner we get to experience those crises, the sooner we’ll overcome them. Right now i want the House to give O what he wants, to let all the consequences thereof obtain ASAP. Why come back from the ledge? eyes open now, all the way down. I’m an agnostic, but tonight I’ll pray.

I should add that the dems I’ve spoken to were either all about abortion and gay marriage, or lefties (nearly, if not actually marxists). This whyi am hopeless tonight. There I’d no way to build a coalition that supports economic (and other) liberty w/o those who want abortion kept legal and w/o those who want it banned; the former will remain captured by the left.

Me too!! “I voted Obama because Romney doesn’t support gay marriage and it’s a civil right issue.” “well, I’m just so worried about the environment and I think anyone that doesn’t want the whole world to turn toxic voted Obama” and “Republicans are not friends of women.” And these are all normal, rational people….who do not educate themselves, clearly.

Obama was supposed to lose. Everyone apparently expected him to lose. And yet, he still won. By the narrowest of margins in most battleground states (probably fraud-driven).

So: we now live in a country ruled by Marxists (Democrats) and their enablers (Republicans), Chicago-style fraud and corruption have taken over our government, and the elected “representatives” refuse to listen to the people.

Our government no longer cares what we, the producers want. They no longer fear us. Time for a revolution.

At last count, 53,202,337 people voted against Obama, that is something we can use to build on towards the next election, the next battle.

I can’t give up the fight. There is no where else I can go. If you’re a socialist, you could flee to Cuba, or England, or Venezuela, or even Canada to get your fix.

Personally, I believe that Republicans, and specifically conservatives should start to think about how to improve our education. Everything starts with an informed, educated electorate. Before you tell me that ‘Democrats and Liberals own the public schools!’ remember that conservatives oppose government solutions, even for education.

So no, I’ll speak for myself, I will never give up, my work is just beginning. If you ask ‘why keep going?’, I’ll give you 53,202,337 reasons why.

The problem is that once corruption and fraud become entrenched in government, it is virtually impossible to win. It started with Clinton, continued under “New Tone” Bush (who kept a huge proportion of Clinton’s bureaucrats), and accelerated alarmingly under Obama.

This is what happens when a corrupt machine politician moves into national government.

On top of which, even when conservatives win, we lose. We ALWAYS lose. Even in 2010, when we won a stunning victory for the Republicans; their response: “Thanks for the House. Now shut up and go home while we work with Barack and Harry. We’ll tell you when we need your votes and money again.”

P.S. I thought this was supposed to be a “big turnout” election for Republicans. 110 M or less? Nowhere near ’08. What gives? Perhaps a whole bunch of GOP votes got “lost” by the voting machines? Just a thought.

America is toast. Done. Dead. Every household owes the world’s capital markets $160,000. Obama is going to increase that. The math doesn’t add up. But Americans are too stupid to understand that. They deserve what happens, which won’t be pretty.

A new party, completely agree. This Repub party cowered in fear when racism was constantly shouted and PEOPLE (and there is most assuredly a difference) such as Condi Rice, Allen West, Thomas Sowell, Ken Blackwell, Artur Davis, et al were painted as Uncle Tom’s and sellouts.

After some more dispassionate analysis of final results I suggest the following. One. Resolve to be every bit as cooperative as the Democrats were in 2004. Two. Be prepared to say I told you so a lot as all the stuff Obama pushed off into 2013-2014 comes to pass.

In 1936, FDR won by playing the class warfare card and blaming everything on Hoover. The economy got much worse and the Democrats were shellacked in 1938.

I agree with your strategy. Unfortunately, Republicans don’t have the stones to do it. John Boehner? Mitch McConnell?

Your FDR comparison is apt. This was a replay of the election of 1936.

While Tea Parties have shown we can win big during midterms, the Establishment has rigged the Presidential nomination process like the bosses of a century ago. We’ll never win as long as that keeps up.

Interesting point: how is it that the Republican ticket lost every single important battleground state? Often by thin margins? I don’t think it’s coincidence, and I’m tired of the feckless, spineless GOP not demanding integrity.

I didn’t mean it was BS that you read it. I believe you. I just don’t believe ‘pub turnout was lower than ’08. If someone’s making that claim, then a whole bunch of voting records have been tampered with.

Something I’ve already noticed is that the real red states all came in gangbusters for RR, but the battleground states where it was close almost all seem to have gobe for obastard. I find that odd.

Hugh Hewitt wrote a book titled, “If It Ain’t Close, They Can’t Cheat.” With the media playing such a big role in this, and hiring pollsters and then telling them to re-weight a poll when they didn’t like the result, and then the battleground states almost all go to obastard, I’m already smelling a huge rat. I watched a lot of the battleground states SOS sites. The urban areas sat on their tallies until the pro-RR counties came in. Then, shortly thereafter, the urban counties would unload.

Do you remember Cathy What’s-her-name in Waukesha County, WI? She’s the lady the rats went after because she was on to them and held Waukesha back so they wouldn’t have a good number to work with to know how many votes they needed to manufacture in Madison and Milwaukee. They were super pissed about it. Why should they care when Waukesha Co. got their tallies in if it wasn’t because they needed to know that number? I think we just witnessed them doing that on a massive scale, with the help of the media commissioning polls that they then had the pollster re-weight so it could later be said that ‘pub turnout was down.

Never forget the massive rally turnouts. Then look at the numbers. Then consider the Chicago ‘rat machine that is obastard’s M.O. all the way. It stinks to high heaven, in my opinion.

Nationwide about 3 million fewer votes were cast for Rommey than McCain. In fact Obama will have won 2012 with perhaps a shade fewer votes than McCain had in 2008 when all the counting is complete.

It is possible that the unanswered negative ad barrage against Romney this summer worked as planned to suppress Republican/Independent turnout in these states. That may have allowed the Democrat machine to get enough public employee union members and urban underclass members to the polls to narrowly win those states. I used to work in a building that contained the regional offices of AFCSME and could watch the building fill up with “volunteers” every election cycle for their GOTV efforts. I’d also marvel at the incredibly high turnout in public housing complexes. largely because the administrators would threaten residents if they didn’t go vote.

Watch for the relative change in turnout rates in strong R precincts and the inner city in swing states.

Another possibility. Maybe the same reason they didn’t turn out for McCain: they hated Romney too much.

Mitt Romney was a perfect bastard to his conservative counterparts during the Primaries. He lied brazenly and viciously about Gingrich during debates and in commercials; no one ever called him on it because everyone (“conservative” media including talk radio, MSM) wanted Romney to win. (When Gingrich fought back in kind, though, HE was savagely attacked for impropriety.) After Gingrich, Romney dismantled Santorum only slightly less nastily.

In short, some conservatives were concerned about Romney’s scorched-earth campaign against fellow Republicans. Conservative leading lights like Rush Limbaugh jeered at them. Maybe they were right.

I am going to have a hot chai latte and wait for the sun to come up. The solutions to these problems (Alinsky, Obama, unions, green energy, big gov’t, huge deficits, sequestration,unchained EPA, dumb-down schools, the rise of Islam, etc.) are out there.

I like your optimism. Wish I could share it, because I don’t think there’s any way out.

Particularly since we’ll probably be awarding the Dems upward of 7 million new voters with bipartisan Amnesty. Marco Rubio (a RINO in conservative clothing, if ever there was one) insists that’s why Romney lost.

I don’t think the GOP exists to win elections. I think they’re part of a cabal whose main purpose is to keep conservatives from winning important Federal offices.

The McCain Palin ticket, despite being confronted with a financial collapse at the end of 8 years of a Republican administration with dismal approval ratings received a total of 59.9 million votes.

The Romney Ryan ticket, facing a President with a dreadful economic record and no plan for recovery received a total of 53.7 million votes.

The Obama Biden ticket went from 69,5 million votes in 2008 to 54,8 million votes in 2012, loosing 14.7 million votes, but still won, because the Romney Ryan ticket was not able to hold on to the voters that had come out for McCain Palin in 2008, let alone increase on that vote total.

When the Republican Party turns it’s back on movement and independent conservatives, along with libertarian leaning conservatives this is what happens.

Where was this huge “conservative Tea Party” wave everyone was going on and on about? Why didn’t the alleged “enthusiasm gap” work for us? Maybe too many Romney votes went for Obama on electronic voting machines? Still doesn’t explain why so many fewer people voted Republican than in ’08.

Romney and the Establishment stuck their thumb in Palin’s eye and made it a point to blow off the Tea Parties. Also seems to me that Romney took great pains to avoid the term “conservative.”

I don’t think the GOP wants to win so much as they want to stop conservatives from winning. They’ve succeeded again, perhaps forever. There is no escape from socialism.

Sorry Professor, wrong parallel. Not Dunkirk, but Waterloo. And I grieve not only for the death of this wonderful country, but for the coming expansion of totalitarianism in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.

Yes, Waterloo seems like the better analogy. 1932. It took 48 years to get us from then to 1980.

I get that Romney must have been toxic to many people. OK. Was it abortion? Mormonism? What? This is what we must know, though it won’t make a difference because we are now committed to this path we’re on; only disaster will get us off it.

Not that it matters now, but, what mix of policies, platform planks, can we get in a candidate that could win?? That could win our primaries (the missing R voters this year won’t participate in 2016 primaries). That could draw the bloody evangelicals and the pro-choicers for the general? Or was the issue something much less divisive and so we have hope yet?

No, we’re committed to this path. I told you so won’t cut it. The worst case is 50 years of wilderness — oddly about the time it will take to get through the demographic humps in our way.

A uick thought. It seems to me that the Democrats are expanding the electoral map with each presidential election. The traditional core of the Republican Party – the white male voter – is also diminishing.

We have to figure a way how to attract more Females and Hispanics and Jews…just to name a few.

We can’t keep depending on the religious conservatives any longer. Their importance is being fragmented by these other groups

Stop with the Balkanization. We lose precisely when we try to be like Democrats and “tailor a message” for various racial/ethnic/religious groups.

That’s what Democrats do, because they have no ideas that they can openly express. Obama won because he successfully demonized Romney and his agenda. And Romney was fool enough to let him.

Your ideas aren’t original in the least. We’ve been hearing it since 1992, when Bush Sr. started it:
“America has changed.”
“Reagan is long-gone, we can’t do things that way anymore.”
“Conservatism can’t win.”

Yes I first started questioning the RR campaign’s thinking when I read on another site 2 REpublicans dissing Palin’s rally numbers as compared to Ryan. I went back & checked & of course Palin did triple the rallies plus getting more at each venue. They are on Yutube mostly .Furthermore Palin did 3 in Ohio alone Oct 30 -Nov 2.

In fact I thought the pics on Ryan’s first rally on LI was looking a bit thin way back when. I have nothing against him except he validated Gamechange by attending the premiere. Though he was not VP then -he was still a front runner.

I don’t know the full story on the convention but That thing Christie was a bad choice.

The above comment by john.frank’s is remarkable. My sense is that a large number of 2008 Obama supporters would not show in 2012 — and that was correct. I am blindsided by the fact that a big percentage of 2008 GOP voters also failed showed up in 2012.

Frankly, I question the quality of information we have been getting from the conservative blogosphere with respect to election prospects. Particularly troubling are the challenges to polling samples with “D+7” type models and the derision of Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com analysis.

Conservatives used to label many opposing view websites as a “fever swamp,” but it’s our side with a delusional fever. I wonder if all the false bravado at Fox News, Hotair, Powerline, NRO, American Thinker and even LI on election prospects actually contributed to the decline in GOP voter turnout. We could have used a lot more sobriety and a lot less cheer-leading on how difficult this election would be.

Someone wrote a few days ago that Evangelicals were supposed to be Romney’s secret weapon. The fact that voter totals were way down for the GOP when they should have been way up tell me these folks didn’t show up.

Romney blew it. He returns to his life of privilege; the rest of us suffer the consequences for his arrogance, his blatant disrespect for Sarah Palin, Tea Parties, and conservatives.

With respect to the portion of the electorate that sees profoundly less government as the answer, the “he wasn’t conservative enough” conclusion is a rather empty analysis that fails to share responsibility for the loss. The election was a referendum on Obama’s leadership, and the country was not sufficiently persuaded to change (which apparently shocks only 48% of us).

Yet you’re saying that a large block of smug voters on the hard right didn’t show up because the candidate didn’t stroke them sufficiently. We’ve gone through a lot of primaries since Reagan won re-election in 1984. Like it or not, candidates that are “kinder, gentler” or “compassionate conservatives” seem to have prevailed every time within the GOP primaries. If your analysis is right — i.e. that conservative hardliners insist on staying home every November because they can’t win fair and square in the primaries — we are in for a long period of American decline. I just don’t buy the analysis, it smacks of unhelpful sour grapes finger pointing by arch-conservative purists.

We are in this loss together. The President overwhelmingly raided the US Treasury so as to pay off all of his essential constituencies and they showed up to re-elect. Let’s tip our hat to the victors, rally the GOP team to greater unity and seek better clarity in both policy and messaging.

Mark – I think Americans have given up hope. About 8 weeks ago there was a survey that found only 67% of adults had even thought about the election. I posted this showed a very low turnout prospect but got no response/interest on LI.

I think all the pundits got this wrong .I think Obama is very surprised to win & totally unprepared.

2013 -is a poisoned vessel . We know he does not have the bones for it nor are there any decent advisors left.

What if they weren’t demoralized by that, but they just didn’t like Romney? I think we need to consider that question. I didn’t love Romney, but was behind him and donated to him. But the missing Rs… we need an explanation, and Operation Demoralize does not seem like enough of one. Those people… we can’t even exit poll them. We just have no clue, none. Or i don’t anyways.

Profoundly suspicious: Obama and his followers seemed completely demoralized (Harry Reid ranting about blocking а Romney аgenda on Friday), and yet they have their biggest-ever turnout? Districts/states going big for GOP went for Obama for President? Oh, and districts (in IL, of course) where Dems weren’t doing well all flipped Democrat. Something very fishy.

I think this was voter fraud on a massive scale never seen before. And with the idiocy of electronic voting, impossible to prove.